^Essentially the streetcar suburb. The crazy thing is we already had good, sizable examples of these- Lakewood, Berkeley, Santa Monica, Pasadena, Alameda, etc.

 

Did the streetcar suburbs lose their luster too, or just the central cities? I've long thought the streetcar suburb was/is the best option for families while dense urban cores are best for singles, careerists, and party animals.

 

The freeway suburb is disastrous- none of the benefits of urban living and none of the beauty of rural living. The mid-density streetcar suburb is a better combination. It's still easy to own a car in places like Berkeley or Santa Monica, but you don't need a car to survive. Small cities with 5,000-10,000 people per square mile overall density usually work for both pedestrians and cars. Ideally, large cities should be overall 10,000-50,000 people per square mile. Beyond 50,000 people per square mile, you get serious sanitation and quality of life problems without massive skyscrapers and extensive heavy rail transit like Manhattan. By the 1950's, NY and SF certainly had a lot of areas with the issues brought up above (and SF still has them today in rent-controlled buildings, but it doesn't matter since people will pay top dollar to live in squalor). Ohio cities always had much larger apartments and better utilities. They were always low density cities with lots of parks and other greenspace. Crime and poverty were big issues in Ohio cities (and many other major cities). Declining public schools also helped push families out.

 

*The issue in Ohio is lack of population density makes it hard for urban retail to survive. They historically had enough density, but losing half of the urban population has been a deathblow for lots of types of pedestrian-oriented businesses.

I think the streetcar suburbs got lumped in with the city and was considered dirty and crowded even if it wasn't the reality. Also, most of the African American people who made a decent enough living moved out of center cities and into the streetcar suburbs, so many of them were abandoned by white flight.

Don't bother trying to explain the suburbs to E Rocc. He's posted many times (with no evidence) that Americans were the people who were inherently most averse to density (despite settling some massive cities in the US) and therefore we are genetically coded to prefer wide open, sprawling places. By his argument suburbs are merely a physical manifestation of our inherent genetic desires, nothing more.

 

Where did "merely" come from?

 

Are you saying that there's no genetic component to an aversion to crowding and tight spaces whatsoever?

 

Are you saying there is? There's literally zero scientific evidence of this. It's something you've made up and stated as fact many times despite no actual proof or scientific evidence whatsoever that you're right.

 

Your reasoning for believing this is based on incredibly flawed understandings of why people chose to come to the Americas. Your theory, at its route, is wrong.

 

*The issue in Ohio is lack of population density makes it hard for urban retail to survive. They historically had enough density, but losing half of the urban population has been a deathblow for lots of types of pedestrian-oriented businesses.

 

Cincinnati still has some good stand-alone corner stores that aren't part of a business district.  There are several around UC, most notably the Riddle Rd. and Ravine St. markets.  There are a lot up in Norwood and a bunch more across the river in Covington and Newport.   

 

 

 

^yeah, but it's not city-wide. Cincy has retail deserts too. My guess is those surviving examples are in denser than average nodes, and likely low crime too. :| If you've got decent density within a mile and low crime, retail has a good shot at surviving.

 

*Crime can be even more damaging than lack of density. There are plenty of high density neighborhoods with no retail in America due to serious crime issues.

It's interesting to consider the long-term negative effects, regarding sprawl, that occurred after County Engineer Albert S. Porter convinced the County Commissioners (2-to-1) to reject (in 1957 and again in 1959) the the voter referendum (supported 2-1 by the voters) for the County to issue bonds to pay for a downtown subway link to the then-new Rapid.  As the below link notes, even though the subway was proposed as a downtown loop, it was designed as such, and no doubt projected, to include a connecting subway line out the Euclid corridor all the way to University Circle connecting with the, then, 2-year-old Rapid line to Windermere. 

 

http://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/361#.VmHi6fm-1cY

 

And even though this was nearly 60 years ago, the impact exists today.  If we could go back in time, like Marty McFly, and somehow remove Porter and install a more progressive County Engineer, leading to the subway's completion, the Hough Riots may have never occurred (or may have occurred somewhere else).  Up through the 1950s, Hough was the densest part of town with many multi-unit structures such as apartments, rowhomes.  Also the original Uptown (Cleveland's 2nd downtown) was nearby at 105th & Euclid.  Hough was also a very desirable area until the early 60s when middle class and professional people (largely Caucasian) began abandoning the area en masse for the burbs; African Americans  (with roots in the South who's families came north looking for industrial work) moved in, slumlords took over; the apartment conditions plummeted and, BOOM, we had the Hough Riots; the apartments were abandonned/destroyed and yada, yada, yada, ... here we are today.

 

As the link about notes, in the the post WWII era (late 40s/early 50s) both Cleveland and Toronto were planning new heavy rail rapid transit systems and both included 'up-the-gut' subways.  As we now Know, Toronto went forward with it's subway while Cleveland stood pat with it's cheaper, out-of-the-way Rapid along the RR ROW.  As we also know, Toronto's subway has been a huge success while our Rapid, well, ... not so much.  Toronto's original Younge Street corridor, today, is uber-dense with residential and commercial TOD development -- there's the equivalent of 1 mini-downtown after another.... and it's still growing.

 

Could Euclid Ave have become Cleveland's Younge Street? Chances are, we'll never know.  We do know the destruction caused to the Euclid/Midtown corridor, which is only now somewhat recovering (but a shadow of what it was 4-5 decades ago), and we also know of the destruction of Playhouse Sq, which while the theaters were rescued by the late Ray Shepardson, there are still a number of empty office buildings in the area ... which soon may all be residential/hotel conversions... but just 1 block beyond PHS to the south, note how the area quickly thins out to surface parking an light-industry... Would this area been filled with luxury apts and offices had the subway been built?  Probably....

 

{I'll note that the Dual Hub rail proposal of HRT or LRT?  subway?  surface? elevated? or both... came about in the late 1980s but, by then, the destruction to the Hough/Midtown corridor had occurred and the affects were well advanced by then}

 

All this to say, there are obvious consequences that can result from 1 bad decision encouraged by 1 man... And Greater Cleveland has been in sprawl mode ever since -- more and more freeways allowing residents to run further and further away from Cleveland's urban core ... Even today, although we've experienced a renaissance of interest in downtown and other urban areas of Cleveland, we're still in sprawl mode (can you say: Crocker Park, Legacy, Medina, Sheffield Lake, Avon, etc, etc)... And yes, we are now even shown more interest in transit and TOD which is a good thing.  Hopefully we've learned from this huge mistake from the past and don't repeat it. 

 

 

 

 

Decent segue to a question I've been meaning to ask for a while: Does anyone know about how far off modern tunnel boring machines (which are at least some of the most impressive-looking technological works I've seen, and some of the creepiest when they're presented a certain way) are of being able to put in something like that Euclid Corridor subway even with all the growth that's grown up on top of it since then?

 

I'm talking about things like this:  http://www.crossrail.co.uk/construction/tunnelling/meet-our-giant-tunnelling-machines/

 

There actually aren't even that many such machines in the entire world and the lease rate for one is apparently up there with an offshore drilling rig.  Until just a couple of years ago, I didn't even know that such machines existed at all.  Note that for purposes of this post, I'm not talking about financial viability; I'm well aware that a tunnel project on this scale would be ludicrously expensive (even the smaller TBMs leased for CSO tunnel projects are eye-poppingly expensive).  Does anyone know whether the human race literally has the technology today to bore a tunnel from Tower City to the Cleveland Clinic that would be wide enough for passenger rail, without ripping up the surface of Euclid Avenue the whole way or bringing down half the buildings in downtown on top of it?

How would that compare to the Columbus Downtown Odor Elimination project that put a large sewer tunnel underneath the length of Downtown?

Decent segue to a question I've been meaning to ask for a while: Does anyone know about how far off modern tunnel boring machines (which are at least some of the most impressive-looking technological works I've seen, and some of the creepiest when they're presented a certain way) are of being able to put in something like that Euclid Corridor subway even with all the growth that's grown up on top of it since then?

 

I'm talking about things like this:  http://www.crossrail.co.uk/construction/tunnelling/meet-our-giant-tunnelling-machines/

 

There actually aren't even that many such machines in the entire world and the lease rate for one is apparently up there with an offshore drilling rig.  Until just a couple of years ago, I didn't even know that such machines existed at all.  Note that for purposes of this post, I'm not talking about financial viability; I'm well aware that a tunnel project on this scale would be ludicrously expensive (even the smaller TBMs leased for CSO tunnel projects are eye-poppingly expensive).  Does anyone know whether the human race literally has the technology today to bore a tunnel from Tower City to the Cleveland Clinic that would be wide enough for passenger rail, without ripping up the surface of Euclid Avenue the whole way or bringing down half the buildings in downtown on top of it?

 

Oh yeah it's no sweat these days.  The tunnels can be bored deep enough to where there is zero disturbance to the foundations of existing buildings.  If the roof of the tunnel is 50 feet below the street it's unlikely that there would be any pipe or foundation that deep.  The problem with these deep tunnels is that the stations also must be deep, and deep stations are more expensive to build than stations just below the surface. 

 

Seattle's Bertha TBM famously ran into a pipe very deep below the surface -- ironically that pipe was leftover from a test boring for the very tunnel that was being bored.  That incident caused a year-long delay. 

^^ How wide was that?  I think sheer size is a differentiator here.  Subway tunnels need to be much larger than sewer ones.  It might be structurally safe to do the latter but not the former.

They're digging 21-foot diameter tunnels for each single track right now in Seattle.  Meanwhile the Bertha highway tunnel is something like 55 feet for two 2-lane decks. 

 

I know a lot of those sewer TBM's are remote controlled.  They dug one that was about 5-foot diameter under the Ohio River a couple years ago to take Cincinnati's water to Boone County, KY. 

 

 

Don't bother trying to explain the suburbs to E Rocc. He's posted many times (with no evidence) that Americans were the people who were inherently most averse to density (despite settling some massive cities in the US) and therefore we are genetically coded to prefer wide open, sprawling places. By his argument suburbs are merely a physical manifestation of our inherent genetic desires, nothing more.

 

Where did "merely" come from?

 

Are you saying that there's no genetic component to an aversion to crowding and tight spaces whatsoever?

 

Are you saying there is? There's literally zero scientific evidence of this. It's something you've made up and stated as fact many times despite no actual proof or scientific evidence whatsoever that you're right.

 

Your reasoning for believing this is based on incredibly flawed understandings of why people chose to come to the Americas. Your theory, at its route, is wrong.

 

Not "fact", but IMO likely.  People on the autism spectrum, for example, often have claustrophobia or a tendency to avoid people, and it really is a "spectrum".  There are very slight cases.

 

My point has always been that if there is, it could have caused people to migrate here preferentially.  Even a slight tendency would reinforce itself over time.  That's how natural selection works.

 

Conversely, in a place where there are no other options the tendency would tend to die out. 

^Essentially the streetcar suburb. The crazy thing is we already had good, sizable examples of these- Lakewood, Berkeley, Santa Monica, Pasadena, Alameda, etc.

 

Did the streetcar suburbs lose their luster too, or just the central cities? I've long thought the streetcar suburb was/is the best option for families while dense urban cores are best for singles, careerists, and party animals.

 

The freeway suburb is disastrous- none of the benefits of urban living and none of the beauty of rural living. The mid-density streetcar suburb is a better combination. It's still easy to own a car in places like Berkeley or Santa Monica, but you don't need a car to survive. Small cities with 5,000-10,000 people per square mile overall density usually work for both pedestrians and cars. Ideally, large cities should be overall 10,000-50,000 people per square mile. Beyond 50,000 people per square mile, you get serious sanitation and quality of life problems without massive skyscrapers and extensive heavy rail transit like Manhattan. By the 1950's, NY and SF certainly had a lot of areas with the issues brought up above (and SF still has them today in rent-controlled buildings, but it doesn't matter since people will pay top dollar to live in squalor). Ohio cities always had much larger apartments and better utilities. They were always low density cities with lots of parks and other greenspace. Crime and poverty were big issues in Ohio cities (and many other major cities). Declining public schools also helped push families out.

 

*The issue in Ohio is lack of population density makes it hard for urban retail to survive. They historically had enough density, but losing half of the urban population has been a deathblow for lots of types of pedestrian-oriented businesses.

The question has to be why the "streetcar suburbs" did not prevail over the freeway suburbs?  Certainly, developers would have had to acquire less land to build those.

 

Were the central cities in a better position to hinder the development of competing SSs than FSs?  Or was there a preference, particular among recent migrants from rural areas?

They're digging 21-foot diameter tunnels for each single track right now in Seattle.  Meanwhile the Bertha highway tunnel is something like 55 feet for two 2-lane decks. 

 

The diameter has a lot to do with potential problems. For example, Seattle has had zero problems with the subway TBM and I believe their subway extension is going to open ahead of schedule as a result. On the other hand, the much larger TBM for their highway tunnel hit an obstacle and has been down for a year.

It's interesting to consider the long-term negative effects, regarding sprawl, that occurred after County Engineer Albert S. Porter convinced the County Commissioners (2-to-1) to reject (in 1957 and again in 1959) the the voter referendum (supported 2-1 by the voters) for the County to issue bonds to pay for a downtown subway link to the then-new Rapid.  As the below link notes, even though the subway was proposed as a downtown loop, it was designed as such, and no doubt projected, to include a connecting subway line out the Euclid corridor all the way to University Circle connecting with the, then, 2-year-old Rapid line to Windermere. 

 

http://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/361#.VmHi6fm-1cY

 

And even though this was nearly 60 years ago, the impact exists today.  If we could go back in time, like Marty McFly, and somehow remove Porter and install a more progressive County Engineer, leading to the subway's completion, the Hough Riots may have never occurred (or may have occurred somewhere else).  Up through the 1950s, Hough was the densest part of town with many multi-unit structures such as apartments, rowhomes.  Also the original Uptown (Cleveland's 2nd downtown) was nearby at 105th & Euclid.  Hough was also a very desirable area until the early 60s when middle class and professional people (largely Caucasian) began abandoning the area en masse for the burbs; African Americans  (with roots in the South who's families came north looking for industrial work) moved in, slumlords took over; the apartment conditions plummeted and, BOOM, we had the Hough Riots; the apartments were abandonned/destroyed and yada, yada, yada, ... here we are today.

 

As the link about notes, in the the post WWII era (late 40s/early 50s) both Cleveland and Toronto were planning new heavy rail rapid transit systems and both included 'up-the-gut' subways.  As we now Know, Toronto went forward with it's subway while Cleveland stood pat with it's cheaper, out-of-the-way Rapid along the RR ROW.  As we also know, Toronto's subway has been a huge success while our Rapid, well, ... not so much.  Toronto's original Younge Street corridor, today, is uber-dense with residential and commercial TOD development -- there's the equivalent of 1 mini-downtown after another.... and it's still growing.

 

Could Euclid Ave have become Cleveland's Younge Street? Chances are, we'll never know.  We do know the destruction caused to the Euclid/Midtown corridor, which is only now somewhat recovering (but a shadow of what it was 4-5 decades ago), and we also know of the destruction of Playhouse Sq, which while the theaters were rescued by the late Ray Shepardson, there are still a number of empty office buildings in the area ... which soon may all be residential/hotel conversions... but just 1 block beyond PHS to the south, note how the area quickly thins out to surface parking an light-industry... Would this area been filled with luxury apts and offices had the subway been built?  Probably....

 

{I'll note that the Dual Hub rail proposal of HRT or LRT?  subway?  surface? elevated? or both... came about in the late 1980s but, by then, the destruction to the Hough/Midtown corridor had occurred and the affects were well advanced by then}

 

All this to say, there are obvious consequences that can result from 1 bad decision encouraged by 1 man... And Greater Cleveland has been in sprawl mode ever since -- more and more freeways allowing residents to run further and further away from Cleveland's urban core ... Even today, although we've experienced a renaissance of interest in downtown and other urban areas of Cleveland, we're still in sprawl mode (can you say: Crocker Park, Legacy, Medina, Sheffield Lake, Avon, etc, etc)... And yes, we are now even shown more interest in transit and TOD which is a good thing.  Hopefully we've learned from this huge mistake from the past and don't repeat it. 

 

 

 

 

 

It's crazy to think the impact that one man or one decision can have on the trajectory of a city.  If Robert Moses had his druthers, Greenwich Village would be a freeway.  It can be a fun yet depressing game to imagine what our cities could have been had different decisions been made.  When I see maps of Cincinnati's subway, it's hard to not imagine how radically different and better this city would be today had it been fully built.

And again, you're basing your comments on a false premise. People coming here were escaping awful situations, not going "ooh look at home much acreage I can afford there opposed to here." They were escaping the tyranny of their home countries or some event that forced them out.

 

You're just flat out wrong about this. I'm sorry to put it so bluntly, but you've never provided a single piece of information to back it up. If people were so inclined to come to the Americas for "space" then how in the hell did NYC, Boston, Philly, St. Louis, Cincy, Chicago, etc. happen? Until after WWII they were all incredibly urban, dense places. Things have changes significantly in some places due to the FHA as Jake pointed out, but the initial settlement of places in this country was no less dense than the places the settlers were coming from.

If people were so inclined to come to the Americas for "space" then how in the hell did NYC, Boston, Philly, St. Louis, Cincy, Chicago, etc. happen? Until after WWII they were all incredibly urban, dense places. Things have changes significantly in some places due to the FHA as Jake pointed out, but the initial settlement of places in this country was no less dense than the places the settlers were coming from.

 

I think the early settlers coming to pre-industrial America probably did come for an opportunity to own land and escape some of the conditions in Europe (crowding maybe among them).  People coming over in the later waves (some of the 2nd and definitely the 3rd) during the industrial period though did settle in dense manufacturing centers.  I think it really depends on the time period you're talking about.

I guess I'm more looking at in percentage of people who immigrated here. The first wave was such a tiny amount compared to industrial revolution immigrants.

 

That being said, the earliest settlers still set up cities. They were obviously small due to low population, but the Salems of the country exist for a reason. They left big cities in Europe and came and created new ones, however small they were due to a lack of people to truly make them large. Come the Industrial Revolution and this was no longer an issue and these cities blew up.

 

 

^Essentially the streetcar suburb. The crazy thing is we already had good, sizable examples of these- Lakewood, Berkeley, Santa Monica, Pasadena, Alameda, etc.

 

Did the streetcar suburbs lose their luster too, or just the central cities? I've long thought the streetcar suburb was/is the best option for families while dense urban cores are best for singles, careerists, and party animals.

 

The freeway suburb is disastrous- none of the benefits of urban living and none of the beauty of rural living. The mid-density streetcar suburb is a better combination. It's still easy to own a car in places like Berkeley or Santa Monica, but you don't need a car to survive. Small cities with 5,000-10,000 people per square mile overall density usually work for both pedestrians and cars. Ideally, large cities should be overall 10,000-50,000 people per square mile. Beyond 50,000 people per square mile, you get serious sanitation and quality of life problems without massive skyscrapers and extensive heavy rail transit like Manhattan. By the 1950's, NY and SF certainly had a lot of areas with the issues brought up above (and SF still has them today in rent-controlled buildings, but it doesn't matter since people will pay top dollar to live in squalor). Ohio cities always had much larger apartments and better utilities. They were always low density cities with lots of parks and other greenspace. Crime and poverty were big issues in Ohio cities (and many other major cities). Declining public schools also helped push families out.

 

*The issue in Ohio is lack of population density makes it hard for urban retail to survive. They historically had enough density, but losing half of the urban population has been a deathblow for lots of types of pedestrian-oriented businesses.

The question has to be why the "streetcar suburbs" did not prevail over the freeway suburbs?

 

Government.  The streetcar suburbs were generally healthy and viable before the government decided that it was going to spend breathtaking amounts of money imitating the Autobahn and opening up thousands of miniature Oklahoma Land Rushes in what were until then far-flung boondocks.

^ Wish I could triple like that comment.

There is some speculation that the FHA was in part created as a hedge against Communism.  Specifically, if many if not the majority of American households owned their own homes (even if they were in cheaply built homes), then they would be much more reluctant to give them up for the supposed common good.  Obviously in hindsight we know that the revolutions only happened in societies where people had little to live for.  But there was fear that there could be revolutions in England, France, and here. 

 

 

My great grandfather certainly had more space in his rural village in Sicily than he had in whatever boarding house he lived in on Orange Ave and E. 22nd St in 1914, that's for sure. There is truth to the fact that many immigrants wanted to get a nice plot of land after stabilizing, but that owes more to the fact that they came from rural areas. In other words, they left a rural area in Europe to come to a crowded area in America.

 

So yeah, I think they came for economic opportunity, not space.

 

When the immigrants stabilized and could rent or buy a house, they opted for a bit more space, but still those houses were usually located in urban neighborhoods. Cleveland and Cincinnati houses usually have pretty decent sized yards, enough room for gardens and chicken coops. But they could still get around on foot or on transit. There's a nice happy medium to be found here. Space and walkability are not mutually exclusive. Just stop building cul-de-sac's in neighborhoods with no sidewalks and no commercial areas within walking distance. Make blocks smaller.

 

Edit - The situation does change if you're talking about early colonists who certainly came for farmland. There is a big difference between farming and suburbs, though.

There is some speculation that the FHA was in part created as a hedge against Communism.  Specifically, if many if not the majority of American households owned their own homes (even if they were in cheaply built homes), then they would be much more reluctant to give them up for the supposed common good.  Obviously in hindsight we know that the revolutions only happened in societies where people had little to live for.  But there was fear that there could be revolutions in England, France, and here. 

 

There was also the notion, however spurious, of making our cities less susceptible to nuclear weapons.  Turns out you can't really do that.

There is some speculation that the FHA was in part created as a hedge against Communism.  Specifically, if many if not the majority of American households owned their own homes (even if they were in cheaply built homes), then they would be much more reluctant to give them up for the supposed common good.

 

That probably had its intended effect, at least to an extent. I don't think it was necessary to prevent a Bolshevik revolution, but it probably did succeed in making middle and lower class Americans favor property rights to an extent they don't in other countries.

^Essentially the streetcar suburb. The crazy thing is we already had good, sizable examples of these- Lakewood, Berkeley, Santa Monica, Pasadena, Alameda, etc.

 

Did the streetcar suburbs lose their luster too, or just the central cities? I've long thought the streetcar suburb was/is the best option for families while dense urban cores are best for singles, careerists, and party animals.

 

The freeway suburb is disastrous- none of the benefits of urban living and none of the beauty of rural living. The mid-density streetcar suburb is a better combination. It's still easy to own a car in places like Berkeley or Santa Monica, but you don't need a car to survive. Small cities with 5,000-10,000 people per square mile overall density usually work for both pedestrians and cars. Ideally, large cities should be overall 10,000-50,000 people per square mile. Beyond 50,000 people per square mile, you get serious sanitation and quality of life problems without massive skyscrapers and extensive heavy rail transit like Manhattan. By the 1950's, NY and SF certainly had a lot of areas with the issues brought up above (and SF still has them today in rent-controlled buildings, but it doesn't matter since people will pay top dollar to live in squalor). Ohio cities always had much larger apartments and better utilities. They were always low density cities with lots of parks and other greenspace. Crime and poverty were big issues in Ohio cities (and many other major cities). Declining public schools also helped push families out.

 

*The issue in Ohio is lack of population density makes it hard for urban retail to survive. They historically had enough density, but losing half of the urban population has been a deathblow for lots of types of pedestrian-oriented businesses.

The question has to be why the "streetcar suburbs" did not prevail over the freeway suburbs?

 

Government.  The streetcar suburbs were generally healthy and viable before the government decided that it was going to spend breathtaking amounts of money imitating the Autobahn and opening up thousands of miniature Oklahoma Land Rushes in what were until then far-flung boondocks.

 

Basically.

 

I think the interstates would have been ok if they would have terminated at the edges of cities as they were originally intended to do. The system originally proposed by Eisenhower never led into the cities and cut up the neighborhoods that already existed.

There was also the notion, however spurious, of making our cities less susceptible to nuclear weapons.  Turns out you can't really do that.

 

Nuclear weapons, no.  Atomic weapons, yes.  That was part of it. 

No it wasn't.  If so, why didn't the Soviet Union sprawl its cities?  Or Japan, which was the recent victim of two nuclear attacks?

^Essentially the streetcar suburb. The crazy thing is we already had good, sizable examples of these- Lakewood, Berkeley, Santa Monica, Pasadena, Alameda, etc.

 

Did the streetcar suburbs lose their luster too, or just the central cities? I've long thought the streetcar suburb was/is the best option for families while dense urban cores are best for singles, careerists, and party animals.

 

The freeway suburb is disastrous- none of the benefits of urban living and none of the beauty of rural living. The mid-density streetcar suburb is a better combination. It's still easy to own a car in places like Berkeley or Santa Monica, but you don't need a car to survive. Small cities with 5,000-10,000 people per square mile overall density usually work for both pedestrians and cars. Ideally, large cities should be overall 10,000-50,000 people per square mile. Beyond 50,000 people per square mile, you get serious sanitation and quality of life problems without massive skyscrapers and extensive heavy rail transit like Manhattan. By the 1950's, NY and SF certainly had a lot of areas with the issues brought up above (and SF still has them today in rent-controlled buildings, but it doesn't matter since people will pay top dollar to live in squalor). Ohio cities always had much larger apartments and better utilities. They were always low density cities with lots of parks and other greenspace. Crime and poverty were big issues in Ohio cities (and many other major cities). Declining public schools also helped push families out.

 

*The issue in Ohio is lack of population density makes it hard for urban retail to survive. They historically had enough density, but losing half of the urban population has been a deathblow for lots of types of pedestrian-oriented businesses.

The question has to be why the "streetcar suburbs" did not prevail over the freeway suburbs?

 

Government.  The streetcar suburbs were generally healthy and viable before the government decided that it was going to spend breathtaking amounts of money imitating the Autobahn and opening up thousands of miniature Oklahoma Land Rushes in what were until then far-flung boondocks.

 

Basically.

 

I think the interstates would have been ok if they would have terminated at the edges of cities as they were originally intended to do. The system originally proposed by Eisenhower never led into the cities and cut up the neighborhoods that already existed.

 

I wonder if a similar outcome could be had by not building as many exits/entrances to the highways. Exits every 5 to 10 miles inside cities, as opposed to every mile or 2.

What would be the benefit of that?  You're still tearing up neighborhoods, splitting them in half, but not giving the people living there access to the highway.

The point is to discourage the highway's use for local trips which makes it function better.  You can make the same argument about high speed rail.  If every podunk town along the way wants a stop then it's not high speed anymore.  Ending the highway at the outskirts of town (the pre-highway outskirts anyway) can be a problem too because you just have traffic barfing out onto the local road network which then gets turned into car sewers to try to handle all the volume.  In our current paradigm, removing exits just means that the remaining ones and the streets that lead to them have to handle more of the traffic volume.  That may still help the highway, but it hurts the local street grid. 

 

So neither option really works in isolation, especially with the highways being (for all intents and purposes) free.  To really reign them in they need to end at the edges of cities AND be tolled such that they're too expensive to use for daily commuting or purposes other than the long-distance intercity travel for which they were originally intended.  You see this in Japan where the highways skirt cities, and because of the tolls they don't have massive volumes of traffic nor do they spawn a bunch of low-value retail at their exits.  It also requires that zoning doesn't preclude redevelopment that allows the city to grow up rather than just out. 

 

http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2015/09/tackling-congestion-as-economic-not.html

http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/07/is-induced-demand-really-about-road.html

 

No it wasn't.  If so, why didn't the Soviet Union sprawl its cities?  Or Japan, which was the recent victim of two nuclear attacks?

 

The Soviet Union did not because that would decrease social control.  Japan didn't really have the room, and was under US rule initially anyway.

 

Neither had the sort of population pressure the US had in its urban areas anyway.

 

 

Metro Moscow -- the only truly big city in the Soviet empire -- represented only a fraction of the Russian and Soviet population.  Many mid-sized and small Soviet cities had public housing towers and had small subway systems.  Many of the subway systems were built to the same specs so that they could run the same vehicles.  That way there only had to be one factory building the trains instead of the situation in the U.S. where almost no city runs rolling stock that is compatible with another. 

No it wasn't.  If so, why didn't the Soviet Union sprawl its cities?  Or Japan, which was the recent victim of two nuclear attacks?

 

The Soviet Union did not because that would decrease social control.

 

A fantastic way to control someone is create an environment where they have to be in a car all the time.

No it wasn't.  If so, why didn't the Soviet Union sprawl its cities?  Or Japan, which was the recent victim of two nuclear attacks?

 

The Soviet Union did not because that would decrease social control.

 

A fantastic way to control someone is create an environment where they have to be in a car all the time.

 

And a better way is to make sure they have to use government scheduled/monitored transportation for anything out of the range of shank's mare.

Driving a car frequently or the freedom to get in one spontaneously and drive 2,000 miles has nothing to do with personal freedom.  People hardly ever get in their cars and go for a 500+ mile drive without any previous plan to do so.  For over 50 years the center of intellectual and artistic activity in the United States has been New York City, where hardly anyone drives on a daily basis.   

The "social control" issue is paranoid conservative kookiness, though unfortunately with a lot of traction.  It's simple cost-benefit analysis.  Omnipresent highways and surface streets and individually owned vehicles offer significantly greater mobility but at significantly greater cost.  And the benefits decrease as the number of people availing themselves of them increase, in ways that were not originally fully appreciated by people reasoning in the realm of pure theory.  Roads are not fully "non-rival" in the sense of pure economic theory; they have capacity limits.  While one additional car on the street does not prevent one further additional car on the street, a thousand additional cars on the street do restrict the mobility of each individual one of those thousand cars.

 

Rail (and bus) lines are far cheaper on a passenger-mile basis, assuming of course that you actually have passengers.  A bus or train car with only one person on it is highly inefficient, of course.  They're also significantly more space-efficient; millions of people use superhighways without ever looking to the left or right just a little bit to see how much space that right of way demands.  That is why rail is the gold standard for urban commuting.  Not only does rail encourage density, but highways basically don't even allow it.

This is random and not particularly on topic, but does anyone know where I can find historical information on Cincinnati's neighborhoods' population? The city website only gives 2010 and 2000 populations. I'm interested in the whole 20th century. Thanks!

 

Driving a car frequently or the freedom to get in one spontaneously and drive 2,000 miles has nothing to do with personal freedom.  People hardly ever get in their cars and go for a 500+ mile drive without any previous plan to do so.  For over 50 years the center of intellectual and artistic activity in the United States has been New York City, where hardly anyone drives on a daily basis.   

 

Popular culture, on the other hand, is largely centered in LA.

This is random and not particularly on topic, but does anyone know where I can find historical information on Cincinnati's neighborhoods' population? The city website only gives 2010 and 2000 populations. I'm interested in the whole 20th century. Thanks!

 

 

You might be able to find census information for communities before they were annexed by the city, but most of the neighborhoods were annexed before 1950, so the data might be incomplete. I don't know where to actually find all of that info, though. The US Census website might be a good place to start, though. They might break it down by zip code or precinct or something.

Driving a car frequently or the freedom to get in one spontaneously and drive 2,000 miles has nothing to do with personal freedom.  People hardly ever get in their cars and go for a 500+ mile drive without any previous plan to do so.  For over 50 years the center of intellectual and artistic activity in the United States has been New York City, where hardly anyone drives on a daily basis.   

 

Popular culture, on the other hand, is largely centered in LA.

 

It's in LA because the movie industry located there in the 1910s-20s because it's sunny almost every day.  If you schedule a shoot in LA you can trust with 99% certainty that you'll have good weather.  That LA eventually became a car-dominated place wasn't an inevitability.  Southern California had a huge streetcar and interurban network that was driven into bankruptcy and torn up soon after WWII under suspicious circumstances. 

 

In the immediate postwar years and through the late 1960s most states required supermajorities for local tax raises.  This is a *big* reason why so few metro built subway systems.  They could and all did get expressways for free from the federal government, but rapid transit systems often required 60% or 66% supermajorities to get local funds.  BART is the biggest example of a system that got built with a locally-approved tax despite having the deck stacked against it with the ridiculous supermajority situation. 

 

 

 

 

No it wasn't.  If so, why didn't the Soviet Union sprawl its cities?  Or Japan, which was the recent victim of two nuclear attacks?

 

The Soviet Union did not because that would decrease social control.  Japan didn't really have the room, and was under US rule initially anyway.

 

Neither had the sort of population pressure the US had in its urban areas anyway.

 

 

 

Seriously?  In 1945, Japan had 72,000,000 people living in 146,000 square miles.  That's a population density of 493 people per square mile.  By 1950, it was 83,000,000 people, for a population density of 568 people per square mile.  Today, it's 127 million people, with a density of 870 per square mile.

 

In 1950, the United States had 151,000,000 people living in 3,800,000 square miles, for a density of 40 people per square mile.  Today we are estimated at 322,000,000 with a density of 85 people per square mile. 

 

Pretty sure that Japan was experiencing population pressure like the US has never known, and won't know until we get to about 1.9 billion people (that's the US at 500 people per square mile). 

No it wasn't.  If so, why didn't the Soviet Union sprawl its cities?  Or Japan, which was the recent victim of two nuclear attacks?

 

The Soviet Union did not because that would decrease social control.  Japan didn't really have the room, and was under US rule initially anyway.

 

Neither had the sort of population pressure the US had in its urban areas anyway.

 

 

 

Seriously?  In 1945, Japan had 72,000,000 people living in 146,000 square miles.  That's a population density of 493 people per square mile.  By 1950, it was 83,000,000 people, for a population density of 568 people per square mile.  Today, it's 127 million people, with a density of 870 per square mile.

 

In 1950, the United States had 151,000,000 people living in 3,800,000 square miles, for a density of 40 people per square mile.  Today we are estimated at 322,000,000 with a density of 85 people per square mile. 

 

Pretty sure that Japan was experiencing population pressure like the US has never known, and won't know until we get to about 1.9 billion people (that's the US at 500 people per square mile). 

 

The point was that in Japan, there wasn't really anywhere to sprawl to.

 

The US had a surplus of rural land.

So ParkScore gives an approximate % of the city area that is parkland (they count cemeteries, monuments, golf courses, etc. btw).  So after doing a bit of math for all 3 using those figures, here were the final totals for each city regarding city area below 2500 PPSM.

 

Total Area

Columbus: 45.090

Cincinnati: 29.302

Cleveland: 20.693

 

Total % Below 2500 PPSM

Cincinnati: 37.60%

Cleveland: 26.63%

Columbus: 20.76%

 

So Cincinnati remains 11 and 17 points higher than the other 2 even removing all water and all parkland.

 

 

 

 

This is no surprise that Cincy has a higher percentage of under 2500/sqmi density. This number from ParkScore still does not include all of the area in Cincinnati that has hilly unstable soil that is unable to be, or is costly to develop. Spend any time driving around, and you'll see there is a lot of it, especially in the western portions, and along the arms of the city that stretch along the river. Your numbers only serve to reinforce that the city is a series of pockets where development can occur, as opossed to a city that develops on what was essentially an open field.

 

There are plenty of cities with hilly terrain that still have higher density.  What the suggestion here is that there can never be any real density comparisons because of geographical or other differences, which I think is kind of silly.  Every single city has something that works against their density.  I'm not sure why Cincinnati is being made out to be a special case. 

^ It's only special when comparing the flat cities of Cleveland and Columbus.  Sure it's similar to Pittsburgh or Portland, but when comparing to other cities with much different geographies it needs to be factored in. 

^ It's only special when comparing the flat cities of Cleveland and Columbus.  Sure it's similar to Pittsburgh or Portland, but when comparing to other cities with much different geographies it needs to be factored in.

 

So if I ran the numbers for those cities and they didn't have the same density issues, what would be the excuse then?  I guess we'll find out, because I am doing them and will post them here.

^ It's only special when comparing the flat cities of Cleveland and Columbus.  Sure it's similar to Pittsburgh or Portland, but when comparing to other cities with much different geographies it needs to be factored in.

 

So if I ran the numbers for those cities and they didn't have the same density issues, what would be the excuse then?  I guess we'll find out, because I am doing them and will post them here.

 

I think you're using the word "excuse" when you really mean "logical explanation." There's also the fact that downtown Cincinnati sits on a state border, meaning at least 1/3 of the densest part of the urban core is in another state. I'm pretty sure this conversation has been had on this website, perhaps even in this thread.

^ It's only special when comparing the flat cities of Cleveland and Columbus.  Sure it's similar to Pittsburgh or Portland, but when comparing to other cities with much different geographies it needs to be factored in.

 

So if I ran the numbers for those cities and they didn't have the same density issues, what would be the excuse then?  I guess we'll find out, because I am doing them and will post them here.

 

What, pray tell, does Columbus have working against it's density? Maybe the farm in the middle of the city next to OSU, I guess.

 

And what density 'issues' are you talking about? Other than in your analysis, I've never heard anyone complain about Cincinnati not being dense enough compared to Columbus or Cleveland.  Cincy probably has the greatest amount of walkable neighborhood business districts of the 3 C cities, despite whatever density calculations you come up with.  I'd wager to guess that this is because of neighborhoods originally forming as their own little entities, largely as a result of topography.  So the same factor that has led to diminished density in your analysis is also the one that allows for the manifestation of density that urbanists desire- walkable urban retail districts, buttressed by residential neighborhoods.

^ It's only special when comparing the flat cities of Cleveland and Columbus.  Sure it's similar to Pittsburgh or Portland, but when comparing to other cities with much different geographies it needs to be factored in.

 

So if I ran the numbers for those cities and they didn't have the same density issues, what would be the excuse then?  I guess we'll find out, because I am doing them and will post them here.

There's also the fact that downtown Cincinnati sits on a state border, meaning at least 1/3 of the densest part of the urban core is in another state.

 

+1 The overall density of Newport and Bellevue is approaching 7,000/sq mile.  Covington is closer to 3,000 but it has to contend with topo issues both in the west and south portions of the city.  Dayton (KY) is over 4,000 and Ludlow is over 5,000.

 

I'm so excited to watch this fight again for the 8378th time!

Allow me to change the subject with something completely different.

 

Last month, UrbanCincy hosted various urbanists writers from around the country for a meeting in Cincinnati. During one of our sessions, one guy made an off-the-cuff comment that I think might actually be a really good idea. It is as follow:

 

In suburban areas, you'll often see these goofy intersection where they build a tiny section of sidewalk on each corner of the intersection and install crosswalks with pedestrian signals. But as soon as you go beyond that intersection, there are no sidewalks and no pedestrians.

 

So, what if, instead of wasting a huge amount of money on these pedestrian improvements that will never be used, the municipality or developer (whoever's funding the project) could opt to pay 75% of the cost of those improvements into a fund. The money from that fund could then be used to pay for pedestrian improvements in area where there are actually pedestrians.